


Empty Journal Pages

by kelseyfitzherbert



Category: Tangled (2010), Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 05:04:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14537280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelseyfitzherbert/pseuds/kelseyfitzherbert
Summary: a short drabble based on a prompt I got on tumblr: rapunzel has died.





	Empty Journal Pages

She had been sick for quite some time, but nobody thought anything of it. 

Honestly, who wouldn’t have expected it? Going eighteen years with magic hair that would’ve cured any illnesses (or prevented them from popping up in the first place) was going to leave her with a weak immune system. Or, at least, that’s what the doctor assumed. 

He watched her getting sicker and sicker by the day. It started off as a cough, but then grew into something more persistent. She became weak, unable to run and jump like she liked to. They pumped her full of medicine, kept her quarantined, and hoped that it was just the winter months and that keeping her warm and hidden would cure it. 

But winter turned to spring, and spring became summer, and Eugene saw no progress in the right direction. 

He sat by her bedside, reassuring her that everything would be okay. That it was just two decades of sickness catching up with her. Reassuring her that Corona had the best medical professionals in the world, and that they were going to make her better. 

But they never did. 

He watched her drain before his eyes, and it broke his heart. He hated seeing her stuck in bed. She was stuck watching the world move forward without her through a window. The way she had already lived so many days before this. And this time, it wasn’t someone keeping her in. It was herself, and she hated that. And he saw it. 

She used to sit and draw in her journal, detailing adventures they had been on, and ones she wanted to go on. “If I draw them while I have time now,” she would explain to him. “I won’t have to draw them when I finally experience them.”

He’d peer through her journal by candlelight while she slept, seeing scenes of the two of them on dashing adventures they’d never taken before. Adventures she dreamed of taking. 

Adventures, he was beginning to realize, they’d never take. 

Eventually, her journal became too much work. She would ask Eugene to draw for her, but the helpless feeling of her not being able to do the one thing she loved got to her, and she couldn’t stand to see the journal anymore. So she asked him to throw it away. Not being able to draw, he thinks, is what killed her.

He thought he’d be ready when they told him that she passed, but he wasn’t. Watching her slip away for months, he figured he would’ve been able to come to terms with it and feel at peace when she was no longer suffering. But he couldn’t. He refused to listen to her father say the words he never wanted to hear in his life. He yelled, threw things, and cursed the name of whatever fate decided she wasn’t allowed the life she so desperately wanted. He was inconsolable, hiding up in his room with the dresser pushed in front of the door. He couldn’t stand to see anybody, and he didn’t want anyone to see him in this light. He needed time to grieve, and he was sure that no amount of time would be enough. Her father knocked, her mother knocked, but he couldn’t open the door. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to go out in a world where she didn’t exist anymore. 

He was stone-faced at her funeral, ignoring anyones attempts at sympathy. He didn’t want anybody's sympathy. He didn’t want apologies or flowers or dinners. He wanted his girl back. He wanted to grow old with her and watch their children grow up. He wanted to take all the adventures in her journal and then some. He wanted her to live a happy, full, long, fulfilled life. Instead, she died before she could really give the world a chance. 

He felt guilty, knowing that he had lived his life and that fate had taken her and not him. He was the one that deserved death. He’d lied and cheated and stolen his way to his position in life. All she had done was existed and dreamed of something out of her grasp and the world took her away. The world took the sun away. 

One day, he found the journal covered in dust under his bed. Months had passed and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to open that wound again, but he longed to see her brush strokes and read her stories against the old pages. As he read the pages, he relieved their old adventures, and imagined their new ones. He watched her life slowly fade away with the way the quality of drawings diminished as the pages went on. And as he watched her life drain away with the pages moving forward, he had an idea. 

He left the next day, saying goodbye to her parents. Stepping through the woods, he suddenly felt her again. He felt her in the way the wind blew through his hair, reminding him of the way she used to play with it. He felt the sun warm against his skin, like the way her body warmed his with her embrace. 

He opened his bag and pulled out her journal, turning to the first page of adventures they hadn’t taken together. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and felt his shoulders relax. She couldn’t be with him, no, but he felt her in everything around him, especially the journal. This journal was her, through and through. With it with him, it was like they were taking the adventures together. 

And he vowed to make sure every made up adventure in that book would be real as he took off to fulfill the first one.


End file.
